Name The Bubble

If you said student loans, you were correct. What is curious is that while virtually everyone has known about the student loan bubble in recent quarters, it is only for the past 3 that the Fed has actually started to disclose this data in its consumer loan excel spreadsheet (link - page 3). For historical data prior to 2011 we had to pull Bloomberg data (TDBCSTUD Index) going back to 1999. Perhaps the recent astronomical jump is why the Fed has been keeping a tight lip on this data...

But you MUST be part of the bubble.
A PhD will INSTANTLY get you a job as CEO of something!
A Ferrari in the garage. A supermodel trophy wife. A 16 room McMansion. Your name in the Hall of Fame.
Keep your face buried in them books slaves!
Don't raise your heads! We don't want you to see the world around you burning!

Here we go again. Another libertarian rant about a noble virtue like education. It is my personal theory that redneck libertarians are hostile toward education because educated and enlightened liberals almost always reject their crazy ideas about free market economics. The more educated people are, the more they will understand the need for higher taxes, tighter regulations and more government oversight of greedy profiteers. THIS is what libertarians are terrified of.

Education is propaganda supporting the government class and elites. Ninety percent of the students are too stupid to figure it out. A few question but most are just hoping to be in the elite oppressor classes that have good vacations, light work, and big paychecks.

gtb, if you've already paid back your student loans they were probably pretty small and probably from decade(s) ago. Today's kids owe something else altogether, think $100k-ish. Not at all comparable. Consider yourself lucky that you were in school when education was still reasonably priced. Rather than getting pissed at these kids, be pissed at the adults who made this mess.

If you do not make the payments the gov't will just take your tax refund. Why bother with those monthly coupons when the work is done for you every year by the gov't. Sure my loans were less but I also chose to attend a cheaper, lesser known State College. I have friends who went to Harvard and they are no better off than I. Parents should not be encouraging thier children to get into the Ivy Leagues just so they can brag about Jonny going to MIT.

If you actually paid them back in full, you are a sucker and honestly deserve what you get. Take that education and use it as a golden ticket out of the country and never look back. Eventually, one day, many years later, you might get a phone call from some 8th-string collector working for SLM who wants to make a deal. That $80k you borrowed is now $400k on paper... but you are gonna make them settle it all for $10k, and they'll take it, because you make it clear that's all they will ever get and it's now or never, final offer. They can't garnish, there are no tax refunds to seize, and they have zero jurisdiction of any kind in the country you live in now. Then you go back to whatever you were doing and laugh about it.

Just be sure to get all the paperwork backing up the settlement and be sure to force them to have a board member sign off on it with a real, notarized signature... make that shit iron-clad. You also want the negative tradelines deleted. Their choice, $10k now, or nothing ever because you literally do not have to care

In the meantime, be sure to let the IRS know how poor and insolvent you are, so that $390k "profit" incurs no taxes.

And that's how you get a decent college degree for $10k.... in fact that's just about the only way anymore.

They can't be paid back. The numbers just aren't there. How can someone with no income and very weak future job prospects pay back a six-figure debt? That's the situation a lot of graduates find themselves in. It's just not going to happen. Realistically, the question is whether we're going to try and paper over this with more financial shenanigans and allow it to be a drain on an entire generation, with a bunch of wealth going into a financial black hole of bad debts, or whether we will pull an Iceland and liquidate the debt and allow everyone to move on.

I'm much more inclined to let students off the hook than I am individuals who purchased outrageous McMansions that they could never afford. Students were, on the whole, misled by the adult generation that was in charge of "guiding" them. However misguided, their intentions were far more noble than those who just wanted to splurge and buy up "goodies" that they couldn't afford. We need to radically reform education and the way we finance education but I don't think we should sacrifice an entire generation of young people to perpetual debt slavery just so that corrupt college institutions and banks can continue to reap their profits.

More inclined to let students off, because they are being "sold" hope for a decent furture. Who doens't want that? Forget the people with McMansions and forget Goldman Sachs--the biggest recipients of bailout money.

Not buying the misled / everyone a victim mantra (albeit it is very in vogue), but propose new rule: No student loans to any student without parent guarantee for anyone under 21. That might slow down student loan growth a little.

uh no. Far more than half of the "students" have no fucking business being there. They are wasting money to have effectively an extended party.

They graduate with degrees in "African American Studies" so they can tell us how idiots like Jose Hustle go on Youtube to brag about how they "been had polo" and that this is a "feature" of "African American English" and part of the oral tradition of black people making utter idiots out of themselves. Well, they don't characterize it like that, they praise this materialism and braggodocio instead of calling it the buffoonery that it is. And all because they "studied" for four years how awesome black people like themselves really are.

They are wastefully employing tons of useless idiots to teach them useless shit. They really OUGHT to be taking out loans to pay for some smart kid's engineering education as that latter kid is the only one of them that will ever be even vaguely productive.

The kids who studied this shit are stupid. They should pay. Kids who studied STEM should get welfare. For a fucking change, let's let the people who CREATE EVERYTHING have some rewards instead of the goddamned leeches.

For many years, getting a useless liberal arts degree was pretty profitable and was seen as "productive" by society as large. Throughout much of the 90s and definitely from 2000-2008 or so, you could graduate from any relatively decent liberal arts college with a bullshit B.A. and get a $60,000 a year job somewhere (banks, non-profits, bullshit "startups," real estate, etc). Even more if you go to an Ivy. It was all fueled by central banker funny money but society at large not only condoned it but relished in it. Get a B.A. in "Business" or "Finance," go to Wall Street, make a $200,000 bonus your first year for doing something you don't even really understand ... that was the goal for millions of students due to an entire lifetime of indoctrination at school and from parents. I don't think young people should be held down for decades because they were unable to challenge the hegemonic worldview of their society at age 17. What does society gain by having this generation throw away a significant % of its income into Sallie Mae (the federal government) and a bunch of zombie banks?

me too but twenty years later and a more realistic understanding of the system, student loans allow every person in the education food chain to demand more salary and bennies. tenured profesors, can't fire them and they won't stop spewing their statist bullshit

Law Schools often subsidize other graduate departments. A law school staff, books and facilities do not cost $55,000 per student, especially when you consider that the professors are often overpaid.

The Medical School system is heavily subsidized by Medicare and state governments.

The entire educational financial structure is deeply flawed and liable to fall apart if the U.S. actually undertakes any significant budget cutting or if the feds stop subsizing tuition. The smart schools will retool, the not-smart ones will fail (I foresee hundreds of smaller, regional colleges closing across the U.S.)

Yeah, those redneck ones are really embarrassing to us Green neck. The orange are ok too but the yellow necks are the worst. Of course I am a silver neck libertarian and I will still be standing long after reality has set in on that thinking.

And since the borrowers will be fully tapped out, and the lenders will plead ignorance, and control the regulators and administration any way, is there any doubt who will once again be forced to pay for this upcoming bail out? This is something that does not require a college degree to figure out.

Beautiful, MDB, I always look forward to reading your posts, although, lately you have been a little off your game. You are best when you hit and run. Make one comment and let the rest of us savor your prose. Don't linger because you end up ruining your initial comment.

@MDB: Libertarians are afraid of an overzealous government hell bent on centrally planning our way into the worst depression the world has ever seen... You really believe this unprecedented level of debt is just going away? We have not seen an actual free market since the FED was created and the Gold Standard was dropped. The only regulations that count: Back on gold standard, balanced budget amendment (do you think we would have invaded Iraq if the american people actually had to PAY for it via higher taxes??), and either simple flat tax or simple consumption tax. Get the government out of our lives and then watch what the free market can do... Until then, you are speaking for the central planners who have gotten us to where we are now...

What you term "education" is simply an indoctrination into the Status Quo, Central Planning agenda... Seriously, why do you think 99% of the higher education establishment is Liberal? Is this a balanced eduation? Is this how we want our youth to learn - only look at arguements through one lens? Only listen to people who have the same point of view? Only associate with people to whom we agree? Most libertarians I know are fairly educated - in fact, I have not met any of these "redneck" libertarian types, but you may want to take a look at Detroit if you want to see the endgame of the policies you espouse.

Education is one thing . . . cramming it down the throats of citizens of this country with a very expensive price tag, as if we're rasing foi gras, is quite another. And if you don't think psychological manipulation on a mass scale is possible or real, please have your head examined.

I'm very close friends with a single mother in a VERY low paying job--less than $20k per year. She has a four year degree that she paid for with student loans, and she did very well in school. Unfortunately, we live in a world where she is simply unable to get a job as a teacher, since counties are "cutting back" across the board. So she took the job that she could get.

Just today I found out that her student loan provider intercepted her income tax refund--money she was counting on for survival, and you're telling me this system isn't rigged? Like she couldn't have found a $20k per year job without going to college? And we let Lehman fail so that the fear of collapse would allow Goldman to get paid hundreds of billions with taxpayer money, and real people are struggling to makes ends meet--real people that could have used that money to get an extra step on life.

The world we live in absolutely sucks. The people at the top are cared for, and everyone else is literally stepped on. MItt Romney should be in a fucking infinite tax bracket, as should anyone who makes more than $7 million per year.

$7 million per year is like WINNING THE FUCKING LOTTERY EVERY YEAR!!!!!!

so she's a teacher...SOMEONE has to pay so that fucking police officers and firemen can earn 200k to jack off all the time, so government workers can be paid to not show up and so we can have entire agencies staffed to the gills with black people for "diversity."

Your friend is one of the ones who pays. Either GTF over it or join my side. Repudiate all the stupid silly liberal shit you believe and accept the truth.

Education is propaganda supporting the government class and elites. Ninety percent of the students are too stupid to figure it out. A few question but most are just hoping to be in the elite oppressor classes that have good vacations, light work, and big paychecks.

These are just test runs to determine how the Algo's read twitter and other conventional news sources. The twitter spambots are in place, we just need to find the keywords used to toss the information around and why it's used.

After the test runs Anonymous will be combing the usual sources to see who brags and blabs about how their toys stood up to Anonymous.

Yet, it is not a complete lack of "education" since you are learning about beliefs and how the majority of sheeple think within the system. Which is still in place...value depends on your viewpoint going through the process.

One could learn what other are being "Taught" and then learn what you need to do to play in the game. Or the more popular which is believing at surface level what your being taught in college is fact and that is the way things really are.

Depends on how you go through the process, I think it is important to get an education and knowing what others believe and are being taught is still very valuable...where people falter is thinking that is the only way.

This bubble also pays my salary. Nevertheless, it's a money hungry, wasteful behemoth, and I don't like what it's doing to my country. It's filling its victims with false hopes while chaining them to a lifetime of Sisyphean debt. The only winners are the credential mills themselves and, once again, the parasitic lenders.

You do not need to pay ridiculous college tuition in order to read books; in fact, it can interfere with real self education, since you usually have to pay attention to their pc requirements and give left wing faculty members obsequious obedience. College is for collecting a piece of paper that you think will help you get a job, which in many cases it will not. Currently, it usually turns into vacation at a very high price. Much cheaper just to go to Hawaii and read books or work on your skills on the internet.

I had my fill of useless humanities classes in engineering school. Most of the professors were dipshits at that level. I mostly ignored them and focused on my real classes.
Sidenote - one time in Thermodynamics II the Chinese professor gave us this exam that the whole class bombed. He expressed his disapointment to us and then as class was ending he rattled off something in his native language. Most of us got up to leave but all the aisian kids stayed seated. Thought that was a little odd. But I had to get to my next class. A few days later I found out he berated the aisian students a little extra saying that he would expect poor grades from us inferior races but they had no excuse to do so poorly. I never did figure out if he was a Democrat or Republican.

Being an active Material's Science student I can tell you my first two Semesters were nothing but Humanities and bullshit classes that had no bearing on my core content. I hated the first two Semesters and honestly feel they wasted my fucking time just so they can claim that they "rounded out" my education.

You know because a Combat Veteran from 12 years of service that follows Libertarianism and Anarchism has a lot to learn about what the state says is good for him. Not that he would have experienced first hand how much the Government tends to fuck people over or anything.

At lot, at the school I attended. I went a different route, taking all the core credits for mathematics and engineering in two years, and then walking out. Getting the degree would have required another two years of bullshit and nonsense.

It takes longer to get where you're going, but at least my loans were paid back long ago.

If you have a strong, independent will then going to college can be amazing. It will test you and challenge you and if you can survive four years without being indoctrinated into The Herd, then you're off to a damn good start in life.

new textbook new ferrari smell high; puke a little drink it back up; there's no bonus in death grips of poison gas higher learning lower brain functioning because even if a poodle wins Westminister and the schmactor wins golden statuette for this or that chop the trophy bitch's head off best in show and the cattle gets auctioned off blue ribbon self-obsessed die narcissist OD you OD poke your little ass in the air with peacocks feathers sticking out because you can't care if you know and now you know so you can't care. hopium is whack suck yourself off the planet ain't payin it pay it back i won't pay it back catch a million plus me me me Abdul Rasul multImedia cryptologist don't know shit get free hack control dont discriminate most everyone needs to die.....

Over 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees (over 8,000 of them have doctoral or professional degrees), along with over 80,000 bartenders, and over 18,000 parking lot attendants. All told, some 17,000,000 Americans with college degrees are doing jobs that the BLS says require less than the skill levels associated with a bachelor’s degree.

No one is telling these kids that a pipe fitter makes 3 times what a social worker does.

But being a pipe fitter means using your hands and possibly getting dirty and it's so not sexy. Try scoring with that 20 year old hottie in the bar when you tell her you're a plumber. Nope. We need a nation of "entrepeneurs." That sounds sexy.

If you're a fat, hairy 50 year old plumber hitting on 20 yr old hotties, it's not your profession that's the problem. Unless you refer to yourself as a "turd herder" maybe. One of my best friends is a plumber and he's rich with chicks.

Smart college grads figure out that they can make more and keep more as a server or bartender and if they aren't outgoing enough for that, working as a school janitor is a county or state job with much better pay and benefits than some jackass cubicle job.

Also, I would like to see an age demographic breakdown for the surge because I know of WAY too many 40-somethings that did at least a 2 year program on loans (HVAC, nursing/medical related, etc.) after losing a good job in '07-'09 and being on unemployment for too long.

It is a bubble and that is a blow off top. Unfortunately most people taking classes right now won't get past the introductary courses and the debt will not be paid since there are no jobs for anyone, especially in retail and labor, which is where most in CC have been employed for the last decade.

The talk of WS the last year has been that this is the next bubble to pop.

You do know that most good PhD programs PAY you to do research that actually can be used .. pretty much any pure, real, core engineering. The reason is the same as with almost everything: Supply and demand. Guess why there are more and more internationals in these jobs? Maybe because the current system does not favor doing a BS or MS that includes higher math, science & eng.. and there's no PhD without the former step (unless of course you buy it, not too uncommon, unfortunately).

There will always be jobs for those who do what only few can do. Supply and demand.

Bullish on iPads. College graduates will be living 18 people to a 1 bedroom apartment to pay off their loans, they'll need something to temporarily distract them from the pain that is their life. iPads FTW